The use of social responsibility and ethics on hotels’ websites: A study at 5 star hotels in Istanbul

Abstract

Today ethical principles and social responsibility projects proved to be for hotels where human resources are the major factors for the success at the industry. E-marketing is one of the widespread method for taking the advantage in such a kind of competitive environment. In this case, social responsibility projects and ethical principles that are implemented by the businesses have been very important as a part of marketing strategies in recent years. Moreover, websites play an important role as intermediary body of marketing strategies as well. Therefore, sharing ethical principles and social responsibility projects via websites is the key factor of effective marketing strategy. The purpose of this research is to determine the extent to which 5 star hotels in Istanbul pay attention to share their ethical principles and social responsibility projects on their websites. For this purpose, the websites of 83 hotels in Istanbul have been examined by applying content analysis. The findings showed that only 25 of the selected hotels were interested in sharing their social and ethical values on their websites. In addition, the topic of ethical principles gained from the websites of 5 star hotels has been examined and social responsibility acts with their eight sub-categories has been evaluated separately. It was found that the hotels supported the projects related the most with education and the least with animals on their websites.